Even amid the rattling bumps, a silent calm spread over the airplane as people contemplated their last few minutes of life. Some chatted with their seatmates; some held hands with people they’d only met a few hours before. Quinn passed a man who was scratching out a hasty note to his family. Others were doing the same up and down the rows.
The tail section took the worst of the bumping and threw Quinn around like he was on a carnival ride. He grabbed the handrail to steady himself as he bounded up the stairs, past the lifeless body of Professor Foulger.
The shaking on the upper deck seemed worse than below and Quinn staggered like a drunken man as he worked his way forward. He could see Mattie sitting beside Madonna Foss in the rear-facing crew seats at mid cabin. Farther forward, just past the bulkhead, and less than ten feet from Mattie, another man was on his feet and moving down the aisle. Quinn recognized him immediately as being with the woman Mattie had befriended — probably her husband, and part of the bombing plot. Quinn picked up his pace, screaming a warning to the air marshal.
Before she could react, the captain’s voice blared across the speaker.
“Brace for impact…”
A crew member shoved the Chinese man into an empty row, out of sight behind the bulkhead. Still a third of the plane away, Quinn knew he’d never make it to Mattie before they hit the Bering. He could see water out the window, blue-green and endless. Wearing a bright yellow life vest, Mattie bent forward at the waist, head down. She wasn’t crying, but intently focused on doing everything by the book, as if she were in the middle of a drill. Quinn wondered if she knew he was near. Beside her, Natalie, the flight attendant and grandmother, shouted to those around her, “Get down and stay down!”
The turbulence stopped and the plane seemed to slow, floating like a kite before Captain Szymanski’s voice came on again, still calm as if he was welcoming them on board for the first time.
“Brace, brace, brace…”
Chapter 66
Rob Szymanski took a deep breath and told himself to keep flying the airplane, no matter how terrified he was. A large crack had formed in the left wing. There was no way they were making it to St. Paul Island. If there’d been rough seas, he would have chanced it, but the great air traffic controller in the sky had seen to calm this little stretch of the Bering Sea to little more than a chop with long rollers that he hoped were spaced far enough apart that they didn’t cartwheel the airplane. If Szymanski timed things correctly, he might be able to slow down enough to save a passenger or two.
Mick Bott covered his set of controls as a safety measure, but left the flying to the captain.
Szymanski eased back on the throttle, keeping the nose up as he neared the water. “You ever hear that death was nature’s way of telling you to watch your airspeed?”
“I have heard that,” McBott said. “Looking good, Captain.” The first officer’s voice was hushed, almost reverent. If he was afraid of dying, he didn’t show it. “Airspeed is at one-eight-zero knots.”
Szymanski kept the plane above the waves, taking advantage of ground-effect as he reduced the power a fraction at a time. Green water stretched out in front of him as far as he could see.
“There are three rules to a water landing,” he said, dropping the tail. “Unfortunately, no one knows what they are.”
Twenty feet off the deck, Szymanski gave the command to brace.
Chapter 67
Emiko Miyagi walked up to stand beside Garcia, giving Bowen a slight bow of her head. “Hello, deputy,” she said before looking at the others. “Are we ready?”
Bowen could see the hilt of a short sword hanging upside down under her left arm, hidden by the white leather jacket. He’d seen some strange things, but a sword in suburban Maryland — Bowen shook his head in disbelief.
“Garcia told me you’d been killed in Pakistan,” he said.
“That is not the case,” Miyagi said. She tilted her head so the hair fell away from her neck. It was shorter than he remembered it from when he’d met her in Japan, barely covering what looked like a bad sunburn that ran from her right ear to disappear below the collar of her polo shirt. “I was able to jump into a well only moments before the missile’s impact. Thankfully, all the brave men from the village ran for the hills at the first sign of attack. I remained underwater long enough for the drones that targeted me to move on, and then slipped away into the mountains before the men returned. Most people believe I am dead.”
“Well, I’m glad you’re not.” Thibodaux shrugged big shoulders.
Miyagi’s lips perked into the slightest of smiles. “We will see about that, Jacques san,” she said.
Bowen’s phone began to buzz. It was Joey Benavides.
“Showtime,” Bowen said. “Joey’s not on board any of the vehicles.”
“That’s a damn shame,” Thibodaux said, starting the truck.
The assault worked as smoothly as Jacques had predicted. Staff Sergeant Guttman guided in his Camcopter drone from the tree line, using both LMMs to reduce the lead and follow SUVs to molten metal. North and southbound traffic along the Rockville Pike was effectively blocked by the two walls of fire, allowing Jacques to plow into the front fender of the Suburban carrying Ross and drive it into the curb.
The two ID agents that bailed out of the passenger side of the vehicle were met by a very angry Japanese woman with a flashing blade. She cut them down before they could bring their own weapons to bear. Guttman sent the Camcopter diving toward the driver’s head, giving Thibodaux time to jump out of the concrete truck and finish him off with the short shotgun.
Bowen brought the Charger to a screeching stop between the two boiling fires. Garcia had the back door of the Suburban open a moment later. She dragged an unconscious Ross, dressed in an orange prison jumpsuit, back into his vehicle almost before he could throw it in park.
She beat her hand on his headrest before the door was even shut.
“Go, go, go!”
Bowen put the Charger in reverse, backing off Rockville Pike onto the residential street to the west, before whipping the wheel into a quick “bootlegger’s” turn so he was facing the other direction.
“Maldita sea!” Garcia spat in the backseat. “I was sure hoping Walter would be in that Suburban.”
The entire grab had taken less than forty seconds.
Chapter 68
Quinn made it to an empty seat, halfway to Mattie before the captain’s command to brace. His lap belt clicked into place a fraction of a second before the Airbus’s tail touched the water. A frail-looking woman beside him leaned against the seat in front of her. A quiet prayer in Russian buzzed against her crossed arms.
A collective groan rose up from the plane and the passengers as spray flew past the windows. The aircraft wallowed in the water, nose still up, metal screaming as the icy waters of the Bering Sea tried their best to rip her apart. The captain did an incredible job of keeping the huge Rolls-Royce engines that dangled from each wing up and out of the water until the last possible second. Even so, they were sliding through the water at nearly a hundred miles an hour when the plane seemed to slump. Thankfully, Szymanski had continued to work the controls, even after he’d hit the water, and the engines on both sides impacted at roughly the same time, ripping them off, but keeping the plane from flipping one way or the other.
Quinn felt as if his head and shoulders were being ripped from his body. A giant fist punched him in the belly as he was thrown against the lap belt with more force than he’d ever thought possible. He thought of Mattie and said a quick prayer of thanks that she was in one of the crew seats, and facing aft, her back to the bulkhead. He didn’t think her little body could stand being thrown against the belt like that.